One of the most difficult parts of building a website is deciding exactly what to build. There are many e-businesses out there with ill-conceived concepts and laughable revenue models.
To avoid these crippling mistakes, you need a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. To help, consider the following questions.
• What are the objectives of your new website?
• How will the new website produce income?
• What makes your new website unique?
• How will you ensure on-time delivery?
• How will you manage and maintain your website?
• How will you convey your trustworthiness and the high quality of your product/services?
• If you have a brick-and-mortar business:
o How will you use your website to drive customers to your offline business and at the same time to provide an e-commerce alternative?
o How will you combine your dot-com seamlessly with your traditional business into a new incarnation called “click-and-mortar”?
Your answers are the basis for the next step in building a successful website, which is the development of a comprehensive e-commerce business plan, that plan will serve as your website’s blueprint. Use that blueprint to lay out the strategy needed to implement the technology that is necessary to gain the most leverage within your current or planned business model. Each aspect needs to be carefully coordinated — technical issues, content, marketing, front-end design, infrastructure, software, and, of course, sales.
There are three essential elements to a website blueprint: a storyboard, a site description, and website content. Successful websites are the ones that manage, through the proper utilization of a blueprint, to combine content, communication and marketing features within a fast-loading, easy-to-use and interesting home page that runs on a robust and scalable infrastructure.
In addition, you must establish a realistic budget and a timeline, with milestones clearly defined. As you define your site through your blueprint always be aware of the compatibility issues which must be considered throughout the decision making process the extendibility and scalability of all the hardware, software, and connectivity decisions.
The E-Commerce Space. The inner circle contains your “back end” — the hardware, operating system, and most servers. The middle circle contains the applications and tools that give functionality to a website. The outer circle comprises the human elements.
This can’t be stressed enough — the same principles that apply to establishing a successful business in the traditional world also apply in the 24-hours a day, 7 days a week (24x7) e-commerce operation. Moreover, like conventional businesses, great websites can take months to plan and build. Defining exactly what to build, then deciding how to build and market the site is the difference between success and failure.
To avoid these crippling mistakes, you need a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. To help, consider the following questions.
• What are the objectives of your new website?
• How will the new website produce income?
• What makes your new website unique?
• How will you ensure on-time delivery?
• How will you manage and maintain your website?
• How will you convey your trustworthiness and the high quality of your product/services?
• If you have a brick-and-mortar business:
o How will you use your website to drive customers to your offline business and at the same time to provide an e-commerce alternative?
o How will you combine your dot-com seamlessly with your traditional business into a new incarnation called “click-and-mortar”?
Your answers are the basis for the next step in building a successful website, which is the development of a comprehensive e-commerce business plan, that plan will serve as your website’s blueprint. Use that blueprint to lay out the strategy needed to implement the technology that is necessary to gain the most leverage within your current or planned business model. Each aspect needs to be carefully coordinated — technical issues, content, marketing, front-end design, infrastructure, software, and, of course, sales.
There are three essential elements to a website blueprint: a storyboard, a site description, and website content. Successful websites are the ones that manage, through the proper utilization of a blueprint, to combine content, communication and marketing features within a fast-loading, easy-to-use and interesting home page that runs on a robust and scalable infrastructure.
In addition, you must establish a realistic budget and a timeline, with milestones clearly defined. As you define your site through your blueprint always be aware of the compatibility issues which must be considered throughout the decision making process the extendibility and scalability of all the hardware, software, and connectivity decisions.
The E-Commerce Space. The inner circle contains your “back end” — the hardware, operating system, and most servers. The middle circle contains the applications and tools that give functionality to a website. The outer circle comprises the human elements.
This can’t be stressed enough — the same principles that apply to establishing a successful business in the traditional world also apply in the 24-hours a day, 7 days a week (24x7) e-commerce operation. Moreover, like conventional businesses, great websites can take months to plan and build. Defining exactly what to build, then deciding how to build and market the site is the difference between success and failure.